Holy cow! That's brilliant and thank you. What I'm wondering, though, is if will bring the expected result, or if it matters. I'm not great at stepping through the logic on this, so I do need to make sure I understand it.

I need to be able to defend the process here to people who used to do this manually with paper (which is something I did myself last week just to get them the list already) as well as being able to adequately defend it to all the applicants, some of whom may inevitably complain.

The sequence of award is important for how we've done it in the past, but I'm not sure that it's important now. The way it was done in the past (and the way I was trying to do it this time) was the table got randomized. We started with the first record and subtracted one from the number of lots available for their first choice, then to the next record. This usually goes on for several records, each of the first ones getting their first choices. Then the first time we get to someone whose first choice is no longer available, that person gets their second choice awarded. And so you go down the list, if the first choice isn't available, and the second choice isn't available, then that person doesn't get anything and you move onto the next name. This goes on until all of the lots have been awarded and there are none left. Then you do the whole thing again for assigning the alternates (which are a different set of numbers).

So I'm just trying to 1) make sure I understand what the code you've written here does (so I can explain it, as I said), and 2) make sure we've got a legal leg to stand on if this way is different than what we've been doing. Also, I just don't always think about these things in the right ways. I've come to coding through several intermediary steps that haven't included much formal training. Most of what I know is self-taught through trial and error and largely in something of an emergency mode.